On this week's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast, it was great to be joined again by former FBI Special Agent, 9/11 whistleblower, TIME's 2002 Person of the Year (and even BRAD BLOG guest blogger) Coleen Rowley.

Rowley filed an op-ed in the New York Times this week with 15 questions for U.S. Senators to ask FBI Director nominee James Comey before deciding to confirm him. Naturally, they asked almost none of them during his oversight hearing on Tuesday, choosing to laud him, for the most part, for his willingness to stand up to Bush and Cheney, one very famous night in 2004, while ignoring the fact that, as the ACLU's Laura Murphy describes it: "Comey...also approved or defended some of the worst abuses of the Bush administration during his time as deputy attorney general. Those included torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention."

As a 24-year FBI veteran, suffice to say, Rowley did not seem impressed with Comey's often contradictory answers --- particularly on mass surveillance and torture --- in the few instances that he was asked tough questions by the Committee. Her insight here is important and very helpful, particularly as the hearing was, incredibly, almost completely ignored by the corporate media entirely.

We also discussed Edward Snowden and the award that her group, Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, an organization of former national security officials, honored the NSA whistleblower with this week, "praising his decision to reveal the extent of U.S. government electronic surveillance of people in the United States and around the world."

After Rowley, we covered the still non-existent "Zombie Voters" in South Carolina; the woman hauled away by cops during her testimony for offering her opinions on the radical anti-abortion bill in the Texas legislature; the student journalists who held NSA recruiters feet to the fire at the University of Wisconsin; and, of course, Desi Doyen joined us for the latest Green News Report. Enjoy!

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AP and others are reporting that President Obama plans to nominate, for FBI Director, Republican James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General under then AG John Ashcroft, during some of the darkest days of the George W. Bush Administration.

The news offer a moment to revisit what a real White House scandal looked like --- back when Republicans had no interest in them and back when there were real investigative Congressional hearings and no need to create pretend "whistleblowers" in order to gin up political "outrage" and "scandal"!

For those of you who believe Benghazi is an actual scandal, or even that the IRS idiocy has anything to do with "tyranny" or "abuse of power", you need only look back to Comey's riveting, could-hear-a-pin-drop, 2007 testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, as he described publicly, for the first time, a very real Executive over reach and astonishing abuse of power that concerned not only the federal government spying on all Americans without warrant or cause, but a White House willing to secretly take advantage of a critically ill Attorney General in order to get approval for a program by having it "certified as legal", even when it clearly was not.

That's what Comey described in his May 15, 2007 testimony --- during hearings on the U.S. Attorney Scandal (another very real one) --- about a remarkable event that took place on the night of Wednesday, March 10, 2004, which threatened to result in the mass resignation of the Attorney General, his Deputy AGs, much of their top-level staff, as well as the Director of the FBI. When asked during the hearing why he had determined to submit his resignation after what he saw and what had happened on that fateful night, he responds to Sen. Chuck Schumer: "I believed that I couldn't stay if the Administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice said had no legal basis. I just couldn't stay."

His testimony describes the night that the Bush's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program was set to expire, as then AG Ashcroft lay in a hospital Intensive Care Unit with a critical case of pancreatitis. Comey, designated as Acting AG during the AG's illness, had refused the White House demands to certify the NSA program as "legal", as was needed for it to continue. The White House was said to have been furious about it, so Dubya, reportedly, personally called Ashcroft's wife to inform her that his own legal adviser Alberto Gonzalez (who was not yet AG) and Chief of Staff Andy Card, were on their way over to the hospital to have the ailing AG personally sign off on the program.

What happened next, as Comey describes it in his testimony below, was an astonishing moment in a very real Constitutional crisis...

Senators Schumer, Feingold, Kennedy and Durbin are curious as to why it seems that Alberto Gonzalez lied about whether or not there was concern in the Dept. of Justice over the legality of Bush's domestic wiretap programming run out of NSA.

Gonzales testified in February of 2006 that there had been no such concerns, but the startling testimony of former Dep. Attorney General James Comey yesterday (video here) tells quite a different story, including a late-night trip by Gonzales and WH Chief of Staff Andrew Card to then-AG John Ashcroft's hospital room in hopes of getting his approval after Comey would not sign off the program. To his credit, Aschroft refused as well. Even after the White House --- apparently Bush himself --- called to inform him that Gonzales and Card were heading over.

The Senators sent the following letter today to Gonzales, reminding him of the apparent huge contradictions in his testimony as compared to Comey's, and to ask him for a "prompt response to the following question: In light of Mr. Comey’s testimony yesterday, do you stand by your 2006 Senate and House testimony, or do you wish to revise it?"

UPDATE: Bob Fertik at Democrats.com suggests it's either "impeach or jail" Gonzo. We'll not disagree. And based on Digby's as-always insightful comments on this, we'll guess she may not disagree either.

UPDATE 5/17: WaPo reports the reply from DoJ to the Senators letter. Their response essentially: the Feb. 2006 testimony is Gonzales' story and he's sticking to it.

The letter to Albert Gonzales from the Senators is posted in full below...

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG
*** by DC Correspondent Margie Burns

Comey testifies --- and the logic of the process of elimination begins to set in. Even the congressional GOP may have to acknowledge that the Department of Justice was not the instigator in those weirdly self-destructive, unprecedented firings of several mostly Republican US Attorneys, mid-term, during a Republican administration. That was the impression I got while sitting in the hearing room this morning at the U.S. Capitol.

Former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey testified at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law this morning. Spending no time or ink on a prepared statement, Comey, who had been subpoenaed by the Committee, devoted approximately two hours to answering questions from the mostly Democratic members present. The hearing, which most GOP members skipped, was chaired by Linda Sanchez (D-CA).

As Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said in opening, “What we don’t know is who actually placed the names of the US Attorneys on the firing lists.”

Comey plugged up one hole: it was not he.

Unlike Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a previous hearing, Comey did not testify under oath (a staffer for the Subcommittee explains that anyone who testifies to Congress is subject to penalty for perjury). Comey did, however, speak clearly and unequivocally. He said in answer to questions that, as Deputy Attorney General, he was the supervisor directly above the US Attorneys, and in response to key questions from Democratic members, Comey stated flatly that...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

The New York Times reports that in 2004 Deputy Attorney General James Comey refused to sign off on renewal of Bush's warrantless NSA spying program. Instead of addressing Comey's concerns, Bush Administration officials took the desperate move of actually visiting Attorney General Ashcroft in the hospital to get his authorization for renewal of the program. Ashcroft was, at the time, in intensive care recovering from pancreatitis.

Comey refused to approve renewal of the program based on concerns over "whether the president had the legal and constitutional authority to conduct such an operation."

In light of these new revelations, Senator Charles Schumer, appearing on Fox News Sunday, demanded that Bush Administration officials testify before congress.

Mitch McConnel, who appeared along with Schumer, chastised The Times for continuing to report on details of the wiretap program. While Schumer said that any investigation should consider a possible whistle-blower status for anyone who leaked this information, Senator McConnel was more interested in punishing the whistleblower.

Because the NSA shared the wiretap information with many federal agencies, it will be very difficult to assign blame to a specific leaker.

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